How to to be quick mucking out shavings

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Tronk

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Thick question no doubt but I've recently switched from straw to shavings thinking it would save time but it's actually taking me longer! Whilst the smell is loads better, which was the primary reason for change, I'm finding that I'm spending ages on my hands & knees picking up the small bits of poo that my horse has spread all through the bed!

So any top tips appreciated please- he is on rubber mats so I'm also wondering whether I've been too mean with the base layer & need a thicker bed to make it easier? He's got about 3/4" deep bed with banks. He also likes to move his hay which I feed on the floor to the back of his bed (I think it's his pillow!)

Leftover turkey & all the trimmings for some help!
 
Shavings took me much longer so i switched back to straw. Unless your horse needs shaving straw would be easier. A tip could be use a thiner bed as it will be easier to pick up poo especially if ur on a rubber matt. And put hay in a hay net it will stop spreading around the hay and replace the hay pillow with a bigger bank of shavings xx
 
My guys are on rubber mats - have two so quickness is a must if I want to ride. I give them both half a bed at the back of their stables but its a thick bed so during the week I skip out and at the weekend I do a full muck out - and cause the beds are thick it never smells or gets stupidly messy - its a case of poo out, push bed back and sweep front and am done - I put a full bale in each week :) Thin shaving beds are messier and take longer to muck out. My youngster is really messy but with a thick fluffy bed hes much easier to muck out :)
 
If you are trying to muck out like straw it will take longer. I find its best to semi deep litter so you lift and riddle the poo off the top of the bed, so the base gets wet enough to stay put. Once a week take out the wet, fill the hole with old shaving from the edges and put a new bale down. If you are expecting it to look clean and fluffy like a hamster cage you will either have to spend a fortune in shaving and pick over the whole bed by hand.
 
Mine have no beds! They do have rubber mats but only the tiniest bit of shavings so they can wee, I fork the poo out and sweep up; job done in less than 10 mins.
 
honetpot said:
If you are trying to muck out like straw it will take longer. I find its best to semi deep litter so you lift and riddle the poo off the top of the bed, so the base gets wet enough to stay put. Once a week take out the wet, fill the hole with old shaving from the edges and put a new bale down. If you are expecting it to look clean and fluffy like a hamster cage you will either have to spend a fortune in shaving and pick over the whole bed by hand.
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I've found things much better this way too. Far easier once the bed stabilises a bit
 
We use a layer of miscanthus or straw pellets, then straw on top. We don't touch the bottom layer, skip out, fluff up the straw and we are done. Takes me 5 mins a stable and I have huge stables.

Practically speaking the more bedding you use the cleaner and easier it is to muck out - unless you have a particularly messy horse. If you want to do a complete muck out every day then straw is your best bet. I find short barley straw the nicest and quickest.
 
I have mine on shavings with rubber mats. Beds are approx 5" deep with good banks. Every morning I take all poo out then throw all the beds up completely. Take all the wet out and as you throw the beds up the stray poos run down to the bottom of the bankings. I leave one bed up until teatime but the lami pony has hers put down immediately.

Teatime I skip out bed which is down & set fair for the night and the other I take poos out and put bed down.

Morning takes me 30 mins but this includes doing feeds, putting hay in, re soaking teatime hay & waters. Afternoon I'm done in 20 mins. Again including feeds, hays, soaks & waters.

It's all about getting used to it and having the right tools. I have the shavings fork designed for rubber mats. Its a godsend. No getting stuck in the floor anymore.
 
My TB is disgusting and I have equine only OCD so mucking him out takes forever!

He empties his haybar into his bed but won't touch/eat hay with shavings in it. He's not a box walker but is nosy so "has" to walk from one side to the other to check through the grills what the others are up to. He'll dung and pee wherever the notion takes him. Basically not matter how thick his bed he destroys it...

My Equine only OCD means I "had" to do a full muck out daily, lift the whole bed, sweep and air the floor and reset the bed. With my youngster this takes 15-20mins, with him an hour...

Slowly losing the will to live I tried semi deep littering and it took 15mins! I lifted all the dung out, the wet in top, fought the urge to dig and then pulled down clean bedding from the bankings. The longest I lasted between diggings was 5 days so I never had a base but even the "big" clean outs were easier as it was pretty much everything on the bottom with clean stuff banked.

Thankfully they're all out 24/7 on this yard so I've just got poo picking to contend with!
 
I have an average thickness bed but I do a full muck out daily, ben suffered badly from thrush earlier this year so I'm a little bit OCD about it, once a week he has a bale of shavings added and a bag of cheap wood pellets (verdo) put where he wees. I use a stubbs muck scoop and rake to lift out the poo, then I sieve any little bits out with a normal shavings fork, I have an extendable metal garden rake that I rake the bed back with just leaving the wet. For the first 2-3 days I just mix it into the pellets and replace the bed back but towards the end of the week, I lift the wet patch out and rake the bed back, slowly including the banks... Sounds a faf but I have it nailed and it takes 10mins.
 
I also think stables are never designed for horses to actually live in. Your horse likes to spend most of his time looking out the door, put the hay as close to the door as possible so he is not walking to and fro to get to it. I had one that pooed all along the back wall so I did not put bed down there and just shovelled it up. I have rubber mats so I only try to put bed where they sleep and avoid places where they dung
 
I know a lot of people who do it very quickly by slinging the mixed shavings and poo against the wall above the banks with a shavings fork. The poo rolls down the bank slope into the centre flat area where you can just remove with the same fork and the dry shavings remain on top of the banks. Then all you do is take some off the banks to beef up the flat area.
I don't do that because I also use straw on top of miscanthus, but I have seen people muck out like that in a very few minutes.
 
Thanks everyone - I'm trying a combination of Shutterbug and JillA's suggestions - i.e. making a thicker but smaller bed at the back, sweeping up then slinging mixed shavings and poo against the wall and removing the poo that way! It's working well!
 
Snow shovel! It's the easiest way I've found to do shavings by far- cleaner too. Mucked out like this for over a decade and wouldn't go back :-) agree with making the bed thicker.
 
I'm glad I'm not the only one with a messy horse on shavings! Started out well but she does love to roll and make a mess. Poo in some neat piles but also disguised under a thin layer of shavings so you stand on it and can feel it then start sifting and dicovering more!. I use rubber gloves instead of a fork, i think it's quicker as I'm not shaking the fork and losing poo off it only to do it agian, with less wastage i feel of shavings. She tends to wet along the back wall so tend to take this out daily although it would be easy for me to keep going and go to deep so i try and semi deep litter and top up with fresh daily. Use about a bale of shavings a week, she's on the small flake shavings i wonder if its better/worse on the large ones?
 
Semi deep litter as suggested above and use something like Easybed or Laysoft which isn't fluffy so poo sits on top and doesn't get mixed into bedding.
 
I use a deep shavings bed, and fully muck out every day. Pick up poos with hands (in rubber gloves) into tub trug then use a plastic snow shovel to lift all the bed up around edges. You can quickly identify where the wet patch is, scrape off the clean bits around that and then lift out wet patch. Sweep over, then do waters, hays and feeds etc. takes about 45 mins to do 1 messy mare and 1 very clean gelding. Get a wheelbarrow out between them. And use about 1 bale a week each. They are roughly in 12 hrs a night. I find I don't take out wet every day especially with mare it does get mashed about a bit.
 
I'm going against everybody who says give him a thick bed! My horse literally walked her poos in so badly when on a thick bed that on first sight it look like she hadn't had a poo all night because they were buried. I found that just covering the main floor with shavings, and having a thicker bit where she wees, it is much easier to muck out as she cannot bury her poo. Sometimes I throw the whole bed up and catch the poos as they roll down like somebody else suggested. This way I can muck out, including putting in haynet, filling water buckets and washing out feed buckets in 10-15 minutes. It always looks fresh because it's always got clean shavings on top.
 
Mitchyden said:
I found that just covering the main floor with shavings, and having a thicker bit where she wees, it is much easier to muck out as she cannot bury her poo.
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Is that on top of rubber mats? Or if not, where does she get to lie down? (Just in case anyone reads this and gets the impression what I call a day bed is okay for at night)
 
honetpot said:
If you are trying to muck out like straw it will take longer. I find its best to semi deep litter so you lift and riddle the poo off the top of the bed, so the base gets wet enough to stay put. Once a week take out the wet, fill the hole with old shaving from the edges and put a new bale down. If you are expecting it to look clean and fluffy like a hamster cage you will either have to spend a fortune in shaving and pick over the whole bed by hand.
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This. I have just switched from straw to shavings and this is how I manage it. I feel the pain on the weekends when I have to dig out the wet, but during the week I just remove the poo, level it all off and Bob's your uncle . . . takes me 15 minutes or so. He's just moved into a new stable and there were five bales of shavings in there to start with (with a big bank at the back) . . . I will run it down until the weekend and then dig it all out, clear out the wet and top up with three bales of clean, better quality shavings (what was already in there is very large flakes, not great quality) and from then on run on adding one bale a week.

P
 
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